The UC Marketing Capstone Experience

May 2017

May 29, 2017

Since the company whom i am working with is a startup i am looking for a kick start to make a business strategy for Investors in my first Phase. As there are no competitors in the market but i still need to do market research and Qualitative.It is a challenging job as i have to start from the scratch and to make it attractive i have created the Outlay on which i have to take Client approval to write the Summary and Problem statement to start. Hope my client likes the Outlay of the whole Project which i worked on very hard last week.

As me and my team member started delving into details on what data to collect and all the predictive modeling techniques to get an blueprint of how things will be taken forward. We ended up reading some more than 10 research papers,which werent enough. As the more we read, the more reference citations we got which were required to fully understand the paper.

After hours of brainstorming, we figured out a way and decided that both of us woud be working and contributing on the ideation. This is by far the most important step towards the project as this step is the foundation of our research.

This past week we came up with more ideas for the project but until we have a follow up meeting with everyone from the company this upcoming week we cannot send out our survey. Mostly because we need to make sure we are on track with the whole company before sending that out and we need to ask which types of markets if they preferred us to ask. After this week though we should be more caught up on what we are looking for in our project.

For this week we are hoping to have our whole company meeting with Braxton and the marketing department with Graeter's. Our meeting with Graeter's is mostly just to see how they like working with Braxton and how they see the relationship developing in the future. This way we can make sure when we are developing our marketing plan we are keeping in mind how the co-branding with other companies works plus how they like to fit in the marketing plan with Braxton. For example, does their co-branding companies want to see their marketing combine with Braxton or is it okay to just do Braxton marketing? Just finding out the simple rules can help us when making our marketing plan.

We met out client Russ on Thursday. Russ, working as a recovery coach, is looking for increasing his clients by geographically expand.

After the meeting, our group has a plan. Firstly, Do Questionnaire. From those survey we collected and explored by our self, we need to work out a survey. Basically include:

Letting people notice that they may have a potential addiction problem under their life habit.

Noticing what they will do next, may ask the doctors, friends, etc.

The main purpose of the survey is to find out our ”middleman”. Like Russ said, the detail description of his job is a secret, that’s why he didn’t have a website or Facebook pages. If his client be exposed by meeting with Russ, who is a famous recovery coach, the reputation of his client would get in trouble in public. Thus, we need the middleman, who not only keep the privacy of the client, but also introduce us to them.

After we collect all the data, we need to find out what kind of people is our target statistically. Then we need to meet those people and introduce Russ to convince them.

Next week, we would focus on the create a survey and find the reliable way to convince the middleman.

May 28, 2017

It sounds easy enough, and should have been straight-forward, but it felt daunting to me. Most likely, I was putting too much pressure on myself to create this clear, concise, perfect document, with every detail nailed down. Once I got over that mental hurdle, the Charter went together quickly.

Now that I have a working draft of it, I feel better about the entire project. The schedule for the deliverables proved to be my favorite part, giving me a strategic road map for all that is to come. The inevitable comments from my client and revisions I'll have to make seem less intimidating, at least for now. Several years ago I was talking to one of the writers from the show "One Tree Hill" and he said the hardest part of writing was getting words on the page. Once you have words, no matter how terrible, you can edit; you can't edit what isn't there. Therefore the first draft any of the writers from the show produced was usually a sorry sight.

I'm hoping that my Charter isn't that bad; I'll find out soon enough.

Perhaps I should state that while I love the project I'm on, my client's mere identity adds a significant layer of ambiguity and added pressure to get things right. I'll learn innumerable lessons of immeasurable value, the first of which is turning out to be dealing with said ambiguity. If I named my client, it would make more sense to all those reading.

This week should prove to be fun, as I continue to dive into the world of guitar making as well as attending a meeting with my client's graphic designer. Getting to help build this brand from the beginning still sounds both cool and crazy all strung up together. It's a little like Eric Whitacre's compositions: that many unresolved M2s sounding that cool is crazy.

This third week has passed more quickly than the preceding two, and I find that by now my head is still spinning a bit with al the to-dos and remaining questions about the project and the course. As I have read from other students on the blog - the scope of this project is a topic of major concern to me at this point. I did not realize at the outset how complicated the industry and competitive landscape would be surrounding our client. This is both exciting and daunting. On the one hand, our client is looking to develop a mix of offerings that seem rather novel in their niche of the marketplace. On the other hand, there are several relevant industries that seem to merge around this strategy. As I begin to understand all of the nuances and competing offerings by firms in the staffing and executive search space, I am left with more uncertainty than I thought I would be at this point in the research.

Another element of unexpected complexity within our project is in managing the communication between meetings. Since our project has 5 people involved - all of whom occupy very unique roles - keeping the larger group aligned and informed seems to be another area of potential difficulty. I am trying to keep in mind constantly the importance of clarity - regardless of where and how the communication is transmitted. In fact, I would say in many cases these clear conversations are actually more difficult to have via email. As we come to the project with different experience and expertise, the use of terminology and vernacular that all parties interpret uniformly is both difficult and essential to our success.

Lastly, I am reminded so far how large a role trust plays in our success in meeting our client's needs. The rub is, of course, trust can't be manufactured immediately. My partner and I are tasked with effectively demonstrating the amount of work, effort, and time we are investing in this project in order to convince our client to provide us with the information and time we need in order to effectively deliver on our goals and objectives. With a full afternoon of meetings scheduled for Tuesday with our client, I'm sure there will be much to report on next week!

This Thursday Morning was the first meeting for our group and client. Overall, the meeting was fantastic and we had a good start for the project. Our client seems very knowledgeable and experienced in his business area, he used to do some businesses around worldwide. He started his current business couple years ago. Through our meeting, we initially went through some details about the client himself and his services. We wanted to know a little bit more so that we could understand better to deal with the following project. He shared many stories with us, which inspired us.

Along with the introduction of the client and his service, we touched with the problem that he was facing. Our client wanted to expand his business in Ohio area, by taking advantage of the "Big Picture", he wanted to acquire more clients (Acquisition). By knowing his goal, my teammate and I set up some ideas to the client, and actually, we asked for some documents and requested from him just to make better promotion for his business.

As my partner and I prepared the marketing plan for our client, according to the background and general research we did. Here, we came up with Plan A which we want to go with. The plan A contains many Technology work; in this way, we would seek for help from outside of our team if necessary in order to make the plan better. According to the Plan A, we will create our Plan B, even more in the future. Assuming our project runs well so far, we are formating our Big Picture apply with our case. The next step for the following week, we are going to meet and follow up with our client. To check with him and make sure we are on the right track.

The first couple weeks of the Capstone course I spent most of my time conducting secondary research on melanoma and skin cancer imaging, but boy have things changed since then! Overall, I feel good about the progress Marsha and I have made so far. Meeting twice a week is helpful because it gives us an opportunity to bounce ideas off each other and have clear conversations on what our focus should be for the evening. One thing that has really helped us stay on track is talking every day so we can constantly check in with each other. We’ve also found it helpful to write everything down, whether it be in our journals, laptops, calendar invites etc. We are doing a great job of having clear communication and staying on track. We’ve started the shell of the PowerPoint presentation and created most of our surveys in qualitrics. We may not have concrete ideas for the power point or survey yet, but just including the headings with a few bullet points/questions has been beneficial.

We had our first weekly check-in with our client on Tuesday where we discussed our progress so far, surprising secondary research, information about competitors and the goals we plan to work on for next week. Through conducting our secondary research, we discovered Marsha is friends with the creator of DermScans biggest competitor. We were then able to schedule a phone call with the company. We are very excited to share the insights we learned with our client at our next check-in.

So far, we have emailed over 40 dermatologists and 20 family medicine physicians requesting 15 minute interviews. Out of the 40 dermatologists we’ve emailed we have only been able to schedule one interview. I am trying not to be discouraged, but I am concerned about not having enough in-person interviews with dermatologist. I think we are going to wait a few more days to see if we receive any more feedback. If not, we may need to follow up with them and ask if they would be willing to have a 15-minute phone conversation instead. If that still doesn’t work, we will send them an email with a quick survey. We’ve got to find some strategy to connect with them. The family medicine physicians have been more responsive and we have 4 interviews scheduled in the next two weeks.

After our first check in meeting with our client it became very clear that our project could go in so many directions. We ended the call with our client asking us “what else could this device be used for?” We are now trying to think of ways the DermScan device can be used other than skin imaging and detecting cancer. We are not 100% sure of what this product/service will be, but I think we are getting close. Hopefully within the next week or so we will have a better idea.

This past week went well. My partner and I are getting in the rhythm of meeting at least twice a week. Next week starts the first of our biweekly check-ins with our client. I'm a bit nervous, because we have done a lot of research, but I am finding it a hard to formulate a summary to 'present' to the client. She seems very open and understanding, but I want the expectation of this project to remain high. There is more secondary research to be completed, but I feel as though we're on halt until we can get a feel for how the client receives the informal report.

Although the charter is a working document (that may change tremendously), I feel good that we have a solid draft to present for signatures. It's helping me grasp what all this project entails. Some challenges so far include seemingly a slight miscommunication over email and the always looming question "what's next?" We have created in-depth interview questions to kick-off our primary research. I am excited to get those scheduled and talk to our client's previous/current customers. We hear so often that B2B is very different than B2C, as well as services. However, it seems that this will be a core aspect of our project to help better understand the industry and our client from a different, but informing perspective.

Today marks week three of our capstone project and our direction is beginning to crystalize more and more. We are working with a startup company and it is extremely exciting to know that our research will guide the trajectory for our client.

This past week, we have started our quantitative research and had our first weekly recap with our client. The interviews have gone well once we have been able to schedule them. Scheduling interviews with dermatologists, who we suspect will be one of our most important targets, has proven slightly more difficult. However, we have used many of our connections in getting access to dermatologists and physicians who refer to dermatologists.

Our client recap meeting went well. We hosted a google hangout, per our client's request for the recap. We were able to submit to them our charter and our key findings from secondary research. My partner and I made sure to ask if we were meeting their expectations and going in the right direction. Thankfully, they have been happy with our progress!

Research is a large part of our project for our client and my partner and I are thankful that we paid attention in our marketing research class. Formulating the line of questioning both for interviews and surveys requires a lot of tact so we do not lead our interviewees down a specific road. We have additionally begun creating our online survey for our quantitative research. While we are planning to rely heavily on our interviews to guide our survey questions, we know specific questions that we need to include on our survey, so we are trying to get as much done as possible, early on.

My partner and I have dedicated ourselves to meeting at least three times each week and established tasks to have completed prior to each meeting. I feel pretty confident about our timeline and goals so far, but we are both aware that something may get off track. We're preparing for that.